Her "old love" is dancing, and she will take the stage for three numbers -- including a waltz with her husband -- at DeVos Performance Hall May 11 when she performs in "Izzo Goes to Broadway."

The show is a musical spoof on Izzo's life and what would have happened if he had gone to Broadway instead of leading the Spartans. The production features about 20 snippets of famous tunes from Broadway shows such as "Phantom of the Opera" and "Cats" to "High School Musical," to tell the story, according to writer/director Greg Ganakas. The cast of five Broadway performers (including a Rockettes dancer), the Izzos and their children, the MSU dance team and theater students, plus MSU basketball team members -- yes, those basketball players -- will be dancing.

Growing up in East Lansing, Lupe took ballet and modern dance classes, and performed with a large troupe of Mexican folk dancers. She still loves dance and is a "Dancing With the Stars" fan, rooting this year for friend Erin Andrews, an ESPN sportscaster who is one of the favorites to win.

At one time (pre-Tom), Lupe pondered a career in theater and dance. What happened? Like any good daughter, she talked to Dad, and he helped convince her going into business probably would be a better idea.

Lupe was successfully running a water purification company when Tom came along. He didn't overwhelm her at first.

"My mom (Frances) was the one who asked me to date him, because I wasn't sure if I wanted to," she said. Both were busy people -- he as MSU coach Jud Heathcote's assistant, her with the business. Lupe didn't know how they'd have time for a relationship.

They found the time, and Lupe became Tom's official leading lady when they wed in 1992.

Three years later, he took over the helm at Michigan State. This year, his team made its sixth appearance in 12 years in the Final Four. In 2000, they won a national championship.

Together, the couple is royalty in Michigan, which is why Ganakas thought the show would be a winner.

"There's a loveliness to them," says Ganakas, an East Lansing native who attended grade school with Lupe and is the son of Gus Ganakas, former MSU basketball coach sportscaster. Now working in New York, Ganakas made only a few changes in the show since its first and only performance at the Wharton Center in East Lansing a year ago as a fundraiser. The Grand Rapids show will benefit arts education programming in West Michigan and MSU student scholarships.

Learning her steps for the Wharton production wasn't difficult for Lupe, 55, "It was a lot of fun," she says. "It brought me back to what I used to do and I loved so much."

Being in the spotlight isn't foreign to Lupe. Cameras cut to closeups of her in nearly every MSU game she attends. She's unfazed by the quasi-celebrity status.

"It doesn't make me feel anything," she says. "I'm grounded, and Tom's grounded, and that's the way we are raising our children."

Raquel, 15, and Steven, 9, both have parts in the production (Raquel sings "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby" to her dad).

Like last year, the Grand Rapids event is happening just a few months after the frenzy of another trip to the NCAA Final Four. It also comes as Lupe deals with the grief of losing her father in January to complications from diabetes.

Efrain P. Martinez was a community activist who fought for civil rights. Lupe remembers going to peace rallies and boycotting for grape workers with him when she was younger.

"He lived his values, and he taught us his values," she says of her father and 10 brothers and sisters.

One of those values was a strong work ethic, something her dad admired about Tom. It was definitely needed to pull off a Broadway-caliber production first performed after two weeks of practice and just one full rehearsal. The DeVos show will be performed with just one rehearsal, also, the day of the show.

And after years of watching her husband take his teams to college basketball's Big Dance, Lupe gets to take the lead on the dance floor.

"He'll say that I followed him," Lupe says of her husband's dancing education for the show, "but he actually followed me."E-mail Linda Odette: lodette@grpress.com and follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/elvis7